DO communities can become a place where students can do research and share their data, generate questions for scientists... interactions between students and scientists and data sharing and comparisons. DO real science, instructional collaboration (study groups); Career orientation.

How can we facilitate opportunities for community action. Ocean events... news, topics of current interest.

NOTE: the use of epals opened up the discussion.
FOR ocean scientists who want to be socially networked, then a Facebook (or whatever) DO community (ties) would service their need to collaborate, to find new colleagues, discover current research interests. Career services, publication collaboration services, data modeling...